What can I do?

Sunday, January 13, 2013

This amazing article in the NY Times Magazine really struck me. It's the story of the Grosmaires, a Catholic family whose daughter, Ann, was murdered by her boyfriend and who decided to both forgive him and work concretely to reduce the sentence he would receive for the crime. They worked through a system called "restorative justice" which focuses on giving the accused a chance to participate in making amendment for the crime rather than simply "paying the price" for it.

Restorative justice consists of a meeting between the victim, the accused, law enforcement, a facilitator and sometimes affected family members. Everyone shares their experience of the crime and the damage it caused them, then the accused is given the opportunity to share what led to the crime and how they, too, were affected by it. Then the group decides, with input from everyone, what can be done going forward.

Usually restorative justice is used for property damage, theft, or other non-violent crimes. This is a landmark case where it was used successfully in a murder case.

The mediator, Sujatha Baliga, has her own inspiring story of forgiveness and learning to overcome anger. Everyone involved in the case has been touched by the approach.

It's very long, but filled with beautiful quotes like the following:

Ann’s face was covered in bandages, and she was intubated and unconscious, but Andy felt her say, “Forgive him.” His response was immediate. “No,” he said out loud. “No way. It’s impossible.” But Andy kept hearing his daughter’s voice: “Forgive him. Forgive him.”

Four days later, Ann’s condition had not improved, and her parents decided to remove her from life support. Andy says he was in the hospital room praying when he felt a connection between his daughter and Christ; like Jesus on the cross, she had wounds on her head and hand. (Ann had instinctually reached to block the gunshot, and lost fingers.) Ann’s parents strive to model their lives on those of Jesus and St. Augustine, and forgiveness is deep in their creed. “I realized it was not just Ann asking me to forgive Conor, it was Jesus Christ,” Andy recalls. “And I hadn’t said no to him before, and I wasn’t going to start then. It was just a wave of joy, and I told Ann: ‘I will. I will.’ ” Jesus or no Jesus, he says, “what father can say no to his daughter?”

Conor was prone to bursts of irrational rage. Ann never told her parents that he had struck her several times. Michael now feels, with searing regret, that he presented a bad example of bad-tempered behavior. “Conor learned how to be angry” is how he put it to me.

When it was Michael McBride’s turn to speak, sorrow overtook him and he told the group that if he had ever thought his shotgun would have harmed another person, he never would have kept it. Kate Grosmaire didn’t bring it up at the conference, but she says she has thought a lot about that gun. “If that gun had not been in the house, our daughter would be alive,” she told me.

As Conor told the story, Andy’s whole body began to shake. “Let me get this right,” he said, and asked Conor about Ann being on her knees. Baliga remembers Andy’s demeanor at this moment: “Andy is a very gentle person, but there was a way at that moment that he was extremely strong. There was just this incredible force of the strong, protective, powerful father coursing through him.” Conor answered, clarifying precisely how helpless Ann was at the moment he took her life.

The Grosmaires said they didn’t forgive Conor for his sake but for their own. “Everything I feel, I can feel because we forgave Conor,” Kate said. “Because we could forgive, people can say her name. People can think about my daughter, and they don’t have to think, Oh, the murdered girl. I think that when people can’t forgive, they’re stuck. All they can feel is the emotion surrounding that moment. I can be sad, but I don’t have to stay stuck in that moment where this awful thing happened. Because if I do, I may never come out of it. Forgiveness for me was self-preservation.”

Still, their forgiveness affected Conor, too, and not only in the obvious way of reducing his sentence. “With the Grosmaires’ forgiveness,” he told me, “I could accept the responsibility and not be condemned.” Forgiveness doesn’t make him any less guilty, and it doesn’t absolve him of what he did, but in refusing to become Conor’s enemy, the Grosmaires deprived him of a certain kind of refuge — of feeling abandoned and hated — and placed the reckoning for the crime squarely in his hands.

Kate Grosmaire keeps asking herself if she has really forgiven Conor. “I think about it all the time,” she said. “Is that forgiveness still there? Have I released that debt?” Even as the answer comes back yes, she says, it can’t erase her awareness of what she no longer has. “Forgiving Conor doesn’t change the fact that Ann is not with us. My daughter was shot, and she died. I walk by her empty bedroom at least twice a day.”

Thursday, January 10, 2013

I completely understand everything she is talking about in this post; that's how my first and second babies were for me. Throwing up bile. Yep. I needed IVs every three days for dehydration. Oh, and the intolerance of any smells!

Things are definitely getting better for me this time around, but they are not good yet. I always hesitate to tell people I'm feeling "better" because the natural expectation is Oh, we'll be seeing her soon I guess! No. Better means I am not getting worse. Better means there are still 6 weeks to go before I can function and drive myself places and take care of my family. Better means that instead of having all-day, constant nausea that puts me on the verge of throwing up with every single bite of food, I have a few moments in the morning where I feel well enough to carry my laundry basket downstairs or sit at the table instead of lying on the couch. Better does NOT mean "all better."

Another thing that really resonated with me in Sarah's post is how much misunderstanding there is. When I was pregnant with my second and living with my mom, she kept pushing me to drink more water so I wouldn't be as dehydrated. I tried, in as few words as possible because talking made me throw up, to explain that every sip of water made my stomach seize and I had to drink slowly so I didn't throw up. And she said, "Well, Tienne, if the doctor told me to drink more water I would drink it, even if it made me throw up!" And I said, "What would that accomplish?" Because the truth of hyperemesis is that nothing helps. An empty stomach will make me throw up, but so will eating food. Drinking water would make me throw up (or Coke, or Gatorade, or milk, or juice, or Perrier, or Sprite, or Ginger Ale, or ANYTHING) yet if I didn't drink, I got dehydrated, and that made me throw up, too. You have no control over your body. There is NOTHING you can do to make it better.

I have been very fortunate with pregnancies #3 and #4 to have found a combination of medication and rest that works to keep me from throwing up, and yet every single moment of the day I am working on NOT throwing up. If I sneeze, my stomach seizes up, and I have to breathe gently and keep very still for a few minutes until it stops rumbling and clenching, or I will throw up. I try as much as possible to keep myself in that perfect state of "food in my stomach, but not overfull" so that if I do sneeze, or cough, or get startled by a bird flying into the window, my subsequent reaction is not to throw up. When I was pregnant with my second, I got word that my cousin had given birth to a baby girl, and I gasped in elated surprise. And threw up, just from that. I remember it vividly because I had been drinking a glass of milk, and it came out in one, horrible, gelatin-like chunk that wobbled when it hit the bucket.

It's not just the unpleasantness of throwing up that I'm trying to avoid. Sarah has a great line in her post that hits the nail on the head:

(One of the crappiest things about hyperemesis is that once you get to a certain dehydration level it is super hard to recover from it-and every symptom just gets worse and worse-it is a vicious cycle-it needs to be diagnosed early on.)

For me, throwing up makes it more likely that I will throw up. My stomach will be more prone to seizing, my gag reflex will be more sensitive, my aversions will be stronger because every time I look at a certain food I will remember the taste and sensation of throwing it up, and I will be unable to eat it. My entire day revolves around trying to not throw up.

I don't experience hyperemesis the way I did with pregnancies #1 and #2 BECAUSE I am putting all my concentration into avoiding throwing up. My baby is actually getting the nutrition I consume because the food I eat is being processed through my digestive system instead of lining the sewer pipes. The most important work I do every day is keeping my food down.

It is very very long. We are on week eight of my illness. I know the light at the end of the tunnel is near. I can make it out, way in front of me. Every day brings me closer to the point where I will be functional again (at least for part of the day) and able to contribute to the family life that has been going on around me since November. The depression is bad, but it's an amazing thing...I can really feel God's grace surrounding me. It happened quite suddenly just after Christmas, like Jesus came along and lifted up a blanket that was smothering me, and I can breathe again.

The thing about an illness like this is that it's the same hope and encouragement you find in a tragedy like a school shooting or a famine. People want to help. They pull together and it brings out the best in humanity. They may not fully understand, but they still try; they still step forward and offer themselves. That's what I find so beautiful. What an expression of love for this baby to come into the world swaddled in the offerings of so many people, some of whom (like those at church who brought us meals) might never even meet the baby!

It is worth it. That's what I keep repeating to myself. It's all so worth it.

About the Blogger

Catholic wife and mother. Lover of wine and good books. Striving to live each day as though I might meet my Savior the next.
My blog documents my attempts to bring a global perspective to my everyday decisions, in the hopes that I might actually be able to make a difference that matters.

He said to them in reply, "Whoever has two cloaks should share with the person who has none. And whoever has food should do likewise."Luke, 3:11

When they had finished breakfast, Jesus said to Simon Peter, "Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. " He said to him, "Feed my lambs." He then said to him a second time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" He said to him, "Yes, Lord, you know that I love you. " He said to him, "Tend my sheep. " He said to him the third time, "Simon, son of John, do you love me?" Peter was distressed that he had said to him a third time, "Do you love me?" and he said to him, "Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you. Jesus said to him, "Feed my sheep." John 21:15-17

PRAYER OF ST. THOMAS MOREGood Lord, give me the grace so to spend my life, that when the day of my death come, though I may feel pain in my body, I may feel comfort in my soul; and with faithful hope in your mercy, in due love towards you and charity toward the world, I may, through your grace, part hence and into your glory.